The last decade has witnessed an increase in the interest in agricultural land in developing countries. While a great deal of attention has been paid to understanding the impacts of this increased interest in agricultural land, very little is known about how local smallholder communities are...

Minimum tillage combined with mulching (MTM) is critical to conservation agriculture, yet its use by smallholder farmers raises challenging questions regarding adoption, diffusion and scaling at farm level. In this paper, we used probit regression and post-estimation simulations to identify the...

Commercialization of smallholder agriculture is widely seen as an essential pathway towards rural economic growth. While previous studies have analyzed effects of commercialization on productivity and income, implications for farm household nutrition have received much less attention. We...

Agricultural commercialization can help to lift subsistence farmers out of poverty, but can also have adverse effects on gender equality. We explore whether private food standards - with their particular elements to regulate production and trade - could serve as a vehicle to promote gender...

Smallholder farmers in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks but often lack access to insurance. Weather index insurance (WII) is a promising innovation, but uptake has been lower than expected. WII contracts are not yet sufficiently tailored to the needs and...

Weather risk is a serious issue in the African small farm sector, which will further aggravate due to climate change. Farmers typically react by using low amounts of agricultural inputs. Low input use can help to minimize financial loss in bad years, but is also associated with low average yield...

This study evaluated the impact of agricultural cooperative membership on the wellbeing of smallholder farmers using cross-sectional data collected from the eastern part of Ethiopia. Using consumption per adult equivalent as a wellbeing indicator, we measured the impact of agricultural...

Many development programs are based on short-term interventions, either because of external funding constraints or because it is assumed that impacts persist post program termination ("sustainability"). Using a novel randomized phase-out research method, we provide experimental tests of the...

This study addresses factors influencing the adoption of specialty rice variety among smallholder farmers in Vietnam. We used a sample of 336 farmers from the Red River Delta who were interviewed between October and December 2014. We follow the adoption behavior model based on the utility...

This paper focuses on the rationale for state-based market interventions to support smallholder production along with some case studies that follow the evolution and impact of what we call 'institutional demand' policies. Institutional demand is an intervention that aims to improve regional...

With a surface area of 1,267,000 square kilometres, Niger is a vast Sahelian country located in the south of the Sahara Desert, which covers over two thirds of its land. In 2015, it had an estimated population of 17 million inhabitants and a particularly high growth rate of 3.3 per cent. It is...

Increase in agricultural production in industrialized and developing countries are based on the adoption of new and improved technologies. Farming household's social and economic conditions greatly determines the adoption of new technologies. Particularly in developing countries majority of...

The integration of African smallholders into global commodity chains is often portrayed as an engine for rural transformation that will generate broad-based economic growth and help to eradicate poverty. In this vein, in northern Ghana, the production of shea nuts, the fruit of the...

Large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) typically depend on strong formal institutions and market-oriented intensive farming, whereas informal institutions tend to characterize the traditional villages located around them. We investigate changes to social capital in such villages when LSAIs...

Transaction costs play a key role in the behaviour of smallholders in developing countries. We investigate smallholder tobacco cultivation in Malawi, Malawi's major export crop, and exploit the introduction of an additional tobacco auction floor to measure the impact of a reduction in...

High transaction costs deter entry of small farmers into the market. With the data from 240 smallholder cassava farmers in Central Madagascar, this study identified strategies to promote successful smallholder commercialization. The coefficients for membership of cooperatives, native of...

During the last five decades, policy approaches towards food security have promoted input-intensive agricultural technologies to increase global food production. However, there are concerns about the environmental, social and economic sustainability of this strategy. Environmental degradation...

This study assessed the determinants of intensity of adoption of Improved Rice Varieties (IRVs) and the effect of market participation on farmers' welfare in Nigeria using the Tobit and Heckman two-stage models, respectively. The sample consists of crosssectional data of 600 rice farmers...

This paper looks at the existing credit programs for smallholders, including agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs). It also assesses the Agrarian Production Credit Program, which is a program being implemented in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture and the Land Bank of the...

Mobile money (MM) services can contribute to welfare gains in smallholder farm households. Previous research showed that one important pathway is through higher remittances received from relatives and friends. Here, the role of other impact pathways is examined, especially focusing on...

Smallholder market participation has been discussed as a catalyst against poverty. This dissertation addresses policy tools to enable market linkage of small farmers in rural areas. It looks at road infrastructure improvement and NGO-based market linkage assistance. The research shows that a...

Oil palm has become one of the most rapidly expanding crops throughout the humid tropics. Over the last two decades, the area under oil palm has almost tripled and its production more than quadrupled. This development is mainly attributed to the rising demand for vegetable oils and biofuels,...